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| Thread: [Official Thread] HoMM 3: Horn of the Abyss - Announcements, Questions, Features |  This Super Thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 ... 110 220 330 440 ... 547 548 549 550 551 · «PREV |
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FirePaladin
Legendary Hero
DoR Modder
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posted April 30, 2024 11:56 PM |
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Tevye said:
FirePaladin said:
Pretty cute, except for one thing: what has the cat seen to stare like that? 
He has once wandered under Bertram's desk. Seen some things there. And whatever goes on below Bertram's desk stays below Bertram's desk.
For lack of a better idea right now (on my part) =P
Funnily enough, I just got Bertram attacking one of my towns in my last PvP match.
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Enshackling time itself, heralds of the Ancients among their heat-depleted land.... Who could they be, who could rally the beings of the East and the North and control the mortals' fate?
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culgil
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 13, 2024 12:51 AM |
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gatecrasher said:
The interview speaks volumes regarding your dedication and enthusiasm.
Thanks to the crew for this wonderful update, gatecrasher found the right words for it! The future development is in good hands!
You gave many interesting little bits of information, e.g. your thoughts about the balance of the game and your future plans. Most intriguing for me were these:
1) "we want to make all magic schools playable, which will require changes to the number and, possibly, quality of map control spells."
2) Factory remains neutrally aligned
3) cloudy, evasive answers about potential new towns
1) I like that you already changed the stats of some combat spells step-by-step (Protection from..., Armageddon, Fire Wall, Summon Elementals, Expert Slow). Ideas to change the number of map control spells get me wondering. We all know Town Portal, DD and Fly are way too good and there is no fire map control spell. As I assume you don't plan to cut an existing spell (or are Airships the preparation to cut DD or Fly??), this would mean adding a completely new map control spell. I am looking forward to seeing what you are up to!
2) I am glad that Factory remains neutrally aligned. Technology in principle is always ethically neutral and depends on how it is utilized. And suicide robots hardly fit to a good alignment 
If any existing faction should be changed to Good, isn’t Conflux the most fitting choice? It’s a long time when I played the Armageddon’s Blade campaign, but as I remember, the elementals and Elementalists of Conflux helped the good factions against the Kreegan invasion (Conflux being a tool of the Ancients). And the Elementalist hero races correspond nicely to those of the 3 good factions (humans, elves, genies, 1 dwarf). Finally, even the colourful, bright atmosphere and grassy terrain fit nicely to a benevolent faction.
3) It makes perfect sense to not communicate a potential new town when it still takes a lot of time to create it, or in particular when it's not certain yet and thus might never be released. As your answers do not exclude new towns, I am mildly surprised. I had not expected new towns beyond Factory to be in any way realistic. And honestly, I don't know if I should hope for it. I love so many aspects in the design of Factory, although it departs from classic towns in some ways (in particular having two lvl 7 units). With amalgamating Jules Verne steampunk, Wild West and Heroes II Wizard town into Factory, you managed to reconcile me with modern weaponry in Heroes III. And that is a huge achievement: I was and still am completely against the Forge, with laser weapons and all that.
At the same time, there are some aspects in HotA, both Cove and Factory, which I am rather sceptical about and don't want to see more of. I think, it was emphasised already, it's too many human units (SoD towns besides Castle have none, with the Mage in Tower being the only exception) and no patterns in hero races and secondary skills (while 66 of 72 regular might heroes in SoD follow clear patterns, Cove and Factory might heroes' skills unfortunately don't follow any clear regularities and are also excessively human). For example, when it became clear that Factory has a hobbit hero, I hoped there would be 2-3 hobbit might heroes, all with one common starting secondary skill (e.g. Luck). Even Giselle doesn't correspond to the pattern for rangers (as dwarven rangers start with Resistance / Interference and human rangers with Leaderships).
While I don't know what your ideas for potential future towns are, I just hope and wish they will have no human units and return to the clear pattern in conceptualising might heroes with other intelligible races besides humans and secondary skills associated to those.
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FirePaladin
Legendary Hero
DoR Modder
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posted May 13, 2024 02:30 AM |
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@culgil
I don't mean to be bothersome, but the Conflux is 99% not a tool of the Ancients. There are more faces to this, but essentially, the Conflux is more or less an alliance of natural forces defending the planet of Enroth from destruction. In that sense, they basically defend it against both the Kreegans, who want to scorch it, and the Ancients, who possibly wiped out many of Enroth's original inhabitants when the VARNs landed, as it happened on Terra (and other places), and who would do the same thing the Kreegans do, in case the Kreegans take a hold of the planet (aka burn it all). There's generally very little to nothing that would point at the Ancients having anything to do with the Conflux, especially because the Ancients' way of dealing with Kreegans on cutoff worlds is by literally just letting Escaton do his thing. Furthermore, Gregory Fulton, the man behind the faction's design, also said that they are natural defenders:
Quote:
My conception of the Conflux was relatively straightforward.
Conflux Heroes and the associated Elemental troops were defenders of the natural world. When there is a threat to its continued existence, they make their presence known, assert themselves, and attempt to eliminate the threat. They have no allegiance to anyone or anything, other than the preservation of the world.
Anything beyond this was developed after I departed NWC.
On top of that, if the Ancients really controlled the Conflux, there would have been no need to call Escaton: the Conflux would have reported to the Ancients that the Kreegans were no longer a threat. And this did not happen.
Otherwise, as sci-fi as the Might and Magic world is, we should not forget that it does indeed have a lot of this "natural", fantasy aspect, too: the elementals themselves and their faction (talking globally/universally here, and not really about the Conflux itself) are proof of that, and they oppose the Ancients (as do the Creators, another natural faction - albeit they are more eldritch in their nature).
Lastly, at least lore-wise, the faction fits the True Neutral alignment. If humans or another race or faction was a real threat towards the nature (flora, fauna, elementals, other spirits) found on Enroth, they would have aimed to wipe them out too, without hesitation, just like they did with the Kreegans. Even during the story, the Conflux was quite distant, despite the common goal. And this just falls in line with the general trope of natural elements and spirits, too. For example, pixies are depicted as being both benevolent or evil, depending on the context, but they generally tend to nature's balance at the end of the day, anyway. I won't overextend myself on this idea.
P.S. Xeron ran after the components of Armageddon's Blade months before the Conflux actually started fighting the Kreegans, so it is also simply possible that the Conflux got triggered to intervene because he clearly aimed to assemble the powerful artifact.
I do agree with you on HotA's heroes, it is virtually the only aspect which bothers me at HotA. There is an overabundance of humans, and it vaguely respects NWC's trends regarding skills (such as town/class/race skills - Offense seems to be the Captain's class skill, but it's still vague). Well, one could argue that Cove is meant to be a pirate (human) town, but let's not forget that towns in HoMM3 are also meant to be flexible story-wise.
Otherwise, I too agree with Factory's alignment being Neutral (for similar reasons as those stated by the Crew, especially in regards to heroes like Agar - furthermore, it even has "outlaws" from Good factions, like Ziph), and it's really nice that spell balance will finally be tackled. 
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Enshackling time itself, heralds of the Ancients among their heat-depleted land.... Who could they be, who could rally the beings of the East and the North and control the mortals' fate?
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